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If you followed their relationship for the past three decades, you may be wondering where Bobby Brown is now and what happened to Whitney Houston’s husband after her death.
Brown, whose full name is Robert Barisford Brown, is a singer and a member of the band New Edition, a six-member R&B group who was known for hits like “Candy Girl”, “Cool It Now” and “Mr. Telephone Man.” Along with New Edition, Brown also had a successful solo career, with songs like “My Prerogative” and “Every Little Step,” which won the Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 1990. Brown and Whitney Houston met in 1989 and married 1992. They welcomed their first and only child together, a daughter named Bobbi Kristina Brown, in 1993. They divorced in 2007 after 15 years of marriage. Houston died five years later on February 11, 2012. She was 48 years old.
“She’s definitely missed in my heart, in my spirit,” Brown said in an interview on Red Table Talk in 2021. “She was my friend. She was the mother of my child. One of the greatest entertainers that I’ve ever met … One of the greatest voices the world has ever beared witness to.” He continued, “We fought hard verbally, but we loved even harder. Our love was strong for each other. We showed it to each other time and time again, over and over.”
So where is Bobby Brown now and what happened to Whitney Houston’s husband after her death? Read on for what we know about where Bobby Brown is now and what happened to Whitney Houston’s ex-husband.
How did Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown meet?
Image: Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images.
How did Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown meet? Brown met Houston in 1989 at the Soul Train Music Awards. We were laughing, and I kept hitting Bobby in the back of the head,” Houston told Rolling Stone in 1993. “I leaned over and said, ‘Bobby, I’m so sorry.’ And he turned around and looked at me, like, ‘Yeah, well just don’t let it happen again.’ And I was like, ‘Oooooh, this guy doesn’t like me.’” She continued, “I always get curious when somebody doesn’t like me. I want to know why.” Brown also recalled the moment in a 2016 interview with 20/20.
“She kept bumping me. I asked her why, and she was like, ‘Because I want to,’ ” he said. “And that attitude — that whole thing right there — that’s the way it started.” He called the moment “love at first sight.” He continued, “There was something about her eyes that made me melt inside.” After the Soul Train Awards, Houston invited Brown to her 26th birthday. “He called back and said, ‘I’d love to come,’ which was a surprise,” Houston told Rolling Stone. Soon after, they went on their first date to see the 1989 movie Uncle Buck. “We went shopping in Beverly Hills, we had dinner at the Ivy and then we just chilled for the rest of the evening,” Brown said in his documentary, Biography: Bobby Brown. “Just the way she looked at me from day one until the last day we were together was always special.”
Brown proposed to Houston in 1991. “She came to pick me up at the airport,” Brown said in a 2012 interview. “I asked her, ‘Do you wanna marry me?’ And she went crazy — ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ She told the car to pull over.” Houston revealed to Rolling Stone that Brown proposed to her twice because she said no the first time. “The first time he asked me to marry him, I said: ‘Forget about it, no way. It’s just not in my plans.’ After a year or so, I fell in love with Bobby. And when he asked to marry me the second time, I said yes,” she said.
Houston and Brown married on July 18, 1992, at Houston’s five-acre, $11 million home in New Jersey. She wore a $40,000 French lace gown by Marc Bouwer, while her bridal party dressed in her favorite color: purple. Her father, John Russell Houston, walked her down the aisle. “I was a nervous wreck,” Houston told Vanity Fair in a past interview. Brown, for his part, revealed in a past interview that he locked himself in the bathroom because he was “scared to death” that Houston didn’t actually love him.
In Houston’s friend and assistant Robyn Crawford’s 2019 book, A Song For You: My Life with Whitney Houston, Crawford revealed that Houston and Brown had their first major fight as a married couple while on their honeymoon. “A few days into the honeymoon, I heard talk around the office about an altercation between Whitney and Bobby,” Crawford wrote. “When the lovebirds returned, Whitney had a visible scar on the side of her face. The cut was at least three inches, running in a straight line from the top of her cheek down to the jaw.” Crawford continued,”I asked her to tell me what happened. [She said,] ‘We had a disagreement. I threw a glass, the glass hit the wall, shattered, and that’s how the cut happened. Couples argue all the time and it’s never a big deal.’”
Brown and Houston welcomed their first child together, a daughter named Bobbi Kristina Brown, on March 4, 1993. In his 2016 book, Every Little Step, Brown revealed that Houston’s drug use increased after the birth of Bobbi Kristina. “For some reason Whitney’s drug use got worse,” he wrote. “Maybe it was because she had to stop using all those months while she was pregnant, but she resumed with a vengeance.” He continued, “I would try to keep Whitney locked in the room, telling her she shouldn’t come in front of our daughter because of the way the drugs affected her. But I couldn’t police Whitney. … She did what she wanted.”
In an interview with Barbara Walters in November 1993, Houston revealed that she had a miscarriage while filming 1992’s The Bodyguard. “It was very painful, emotionally and physically,” she said. “I was back on the set the next day. And it’s over. But I had Bobbi Kristina one year later, and I am blessed.” Houston announced she was pregnant with a second child at a concert in 1994. Two weeks after the announcement, however, her representative confirmed that she had miscarried while on tour in Texas. “She’s sad but they hope to have more children,” the representative told the Associated Press at the time. Houston had another miscarriage in December 1996. They were expecting another baby in July 1997.
Why did Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown divorce?
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Why did Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown divorce? Houston and Brown separated in September 2006 after almost 15 years of marriage. They finalized their divorce on April 24, 2007. Four years before their divorce, officers from the Fulton County Police Department were called to Houston and Brown’s home in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 7, 2003, after she alleged that he struck her with his open right hand and left her with a cut lip and a bruise on her left cheek. “It was a verbal confrontation which escalated to a physical confrontation,” a representative for the Fulton County Police Department told the Journal-Constitution at the time. Brown had already left the scene by the time police arrived. Three days later, on December 10, 2003, Brown appeared in court, where he was charged with one count of battery. Houston, who appeared in court with a visible bruise on her cheek, told reporters at the time, “We’re still together.” In a 2004 interview with Dateline, Brown denied that he hit Houston and accused her of attacking him. “She hit me. She threw something at me,” he said. “It escalated.” In his 2016 book, Brown confessed to hitting Houston. “Whitney tried to stop me from beating up the dealer, but I was not having it,” he wrote. “I turned around to her, drew back my hand and smacked her across the face. The moment it happened, I was stunned and full of regret.”
In 2005, Brown’s reality TV show, Being Bobby Brown, premiered on A&E. Houston revealed in a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey that the show made their marital issues worse. “I just wanted people to know that I was his wife.” Houston said at the time. “I knew I was trying to be Mrs. Bobby Brown. … I was trying to make a statement. Like, ‘[The press isn’t] gonna win. You’re not going to do that. We got married. We were in love. We were crazy for each other.’ … We fought for that. And then somehow it got really kind of messy and got lost. I wasn’t happy with the marriage. I was losing me.”
So why did Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown divorce? In the same interview with Winfrey, Houston recalled the red flags that led her to separate from Brown. “We had a big, big giant portrait of me and him and my child. He cut my head off the picture,” she said. “That was one sign.” She also accused Brown of cheating on her. “I just knew. I was like, ‘You don’t smell right. You don’t look right. Something’s going on,’” she said. “And then all this other stuff started coming out about him being with this one or that one or being too promiscuous.”
Houston revealed that the final straw in her relationship with Brown was when he slapped her again in December 2004. “I started moving furniture out of the house,” she said. “I even asked him to leave. … And that was the time where he slapped me.” She left for good in 2006. “I went to L.A.,” she said. “I just got on a plane. … I wasn’t going to be in an unholy matrimony. I wasn’t going to be living with a man who decided that he didn’t want to live the same way I did or thought about marriage or me the same way.”
Houston filed to divorce Brown in 2006. “I was hurt,” Brown said in the documentary, Bobby Brown: Remembering Whitney, of the moment he was served divorce papers. “I was basically mortified. I was like, ‘Wow, I did not see it coming.’” He continued, “She got everything. Property, jewelry, cars … I left with my sobriety.” They finalized their divorce on April 24, 2007. Houston was awarded sole custody of Bobbi Kristina.
Where is Bobby Brown now?
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Where is Bobby Brown now? Soon after his divorce from Houston, Brown started dating his manager, Alicia Etheredge. They welcomed their first child together, a son named Cassius, in 2009. They got engaged in May 2010 after Brown proposed during a performance at Funk Fest in Jacksonville, Florida. They married on June 18, 2012, in Hawaii. They welcomed their second child, a daughter named Bodhi Brown, in 2015. Their third child, a daughter named Hendrix Estelle Brown, was born in 2016.
After his divorce from Houston in 2007, Brown sued his ex-wife for shared custody of Bobbi Kristina, as well as child support and spousal support. Brown contended that he wasn’t able to respond to Houston’s divorce petition in a timely manner because he was “homeless” and had “very little money.” “I believe I have a wonderful relationship with my daughter Bobbi Kris — a relationship that I would like to see strengthen and grow,” he said in his custody filing. The motion was denied in 2008 because “there were no appearances or phone calls from Mr. Brown today for a scheduled hearing,” according to a court representative.
Brown and Houston had a amicable relationship in the final years of her life. In 2011, Houston performed at the funeral of Brown’s mother, Carole Brown, who died on January 21, 2011, in California. Houston sang two songs for the service “Precious Lord Take My Hand” solo and “Never Would Have Made It” with New Edition. In 2016, a source told People that Brown and Houston had “no drama” in the final years of Houston’s life. “They had finally gotten to a place where there was no drama at all,” the insider said. “He loved her as the mother of his child and as a woman who he had spent his youth with.”
After Houston’s death on February 11, 2012, Brown released a statement reacting to the news. “I am deeply saddened at the passing of my ex-wife,” he said at the time. Brown told People in 2022 that he was shocked by Houston’s death. “I thought she was getting herself together,” he said. “I didn’t think she would turn back.” The day of Houston’s death, Brown honored his ex-wife at a performance with New Edition in Mississippi. “I would like to say, I love you, Whitney,” he said during the performance. In an interview with Today in April 2012, Brown denied that he was the “reason” for Houston’s death. “I didn’t know she was struggling with [drugs] still,” he said. “It’s a hard fight to maintain sobriety that way.” He added that Houston’s struggle with drugs started “way before” they met. He continued, “I wasn’t the one that got Whitney on drugs at all,” he said. “I’m not the reason she’s gone.”
In an interview on Red Table Talk in 2021, Brown confessed that he still misses Houston. “She’s definitely missed in my heart, in my spirit,” he said. “She was my friend. She was the mother of my child. One of the greatest entertainers that I’ve ever met … One of the greatest voices the world has ever beared witness to.” He continued, “We fought hard verbally, but we loved even harder,” he said. “Our love was strong for each other. We showed it to each other time and time again, over and over.” He added, “We just got caught up and that had nothing to do with how we felt about each other. The love was always there.”
He also called Houston the “love of his life” in his documentary, Biography: Bobby Brown. “She was just the kindest, sweetest person that I knew,” he said. He also claimed that, if they had not divorced, Houston may still be alive. “I think we could have helped each other out,” he said. “I think she’d still be here if we hadn’t divorced.” When asked by E! News about Houston’s 2022 biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Brown said he was “probably gonna watch it.” He also reacted to actor Ashton Sanders playing him in the movie, telling E! News at the time that he was “looking forward to it.”
Image: Harper Paperbacks.
For more about Whitney Houston, read her mother Cissy Houston’s biography, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped. The New York Times bestseller—which includes a foreword by her collaborator and cousin Dionne Warwick—takes readers through Whitney’s “astonishing life, ground-breaking career and tragic death” told from the “only one who truly knows” her story: her mother. The book, which includes never-before-seen photographs of Whitney throughout her life, also sees Cissy open up for the first time about her daughter’s death, as well as Whitney’s darkest moments, from her turbulent marriage to Bobby Brown to her misunderstood struggles with drug abuse. “Cissy goes behind the tabloid headlines to show fans around the world the true, human side of a strong, successful—yet flawed—musical icon who died much too young,” the publisher’s description reads.
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